Portsmouth High School Sets National Record! 76 Wins in a Row!

If you know me, you know I love baseball. A lot.

And if you know me, you know I love Portsmouth. A lot.

And I love news that brings positive attention to our fair city. A lot.

So this story has got me particularly jazzed: With it's 76th win in a row, Portsmouth High School baseball has set the record for longest high school baseball winning streak in the nation! 

Personal anecdote:
My nephew Geoff plays for Oyster River, and he alerted me to the streak with a Facebook invitation to an event "Beat Portsmouth and End Their Streak." Uh-oh. A quandry. I'm a Portsmouth guy. My stepson is a Portsmouth Clipper -- played a little JV last year. So do I root for Portsmouth or for my nephew?  Luckily,  the game was moved up from its original time and was well underway by the time I got out of work and got over to PHS.  By then, PHS was up 8-0 on Oyster River, and Geoff was already out of the game.  Phew!

PHS won that game, then went on the road.  I started following them on Facebook, so I could get up-to-the-minute scoring updates.

The media attention has been impressive.  Here's a sampling:

The PHS Streak got some play in ESPN Boston blog right along, with Roger Brown reporting: http://espn.go.com/blog/boston/high-school/tag/_/name/portsmouth-n-h

WMUR-TV showed up for the record-setting game at Pembroke: Portsmouth Baseball Sets The Record - Video - WMUR New Hampshire

USA Today did a nice piece on it -- and not just running an AP story, either!

Boston Globe, too, as you'd hope.

What's really neat about it is that it puts NH, and Northeast, baseball in the spotlight.  So much attention is focused on Florida, Texas, and California high school ball--as it should be, because they can play pretty much year round. Here in Portsmouth, we've got precious little ball-playing weather... And this Spring has been one of the worst yet, so this bit of sunshine is most welcome indeed.  Congrats kids!